The following page contains some helpful prompts and tips for troubleshooting problematic videos encountered during production. TechOps recommends going through this list first before requesting a transcode.
However, if you are in need of an immediate transcode due to time constraints or you find that none of the troubleshooting below fixes the problem you are experiencing, contact techops@captionmax.com using the following email template to submit a request:
EMAIL SUBJECT:
Transcode Requested: [Name of Video including the file extension]
EMAIL MESSAGE:
Video Name: [Name of video including the file extension]
Network Location: [Current path to the networked copy of the file]
Issue: [One to two-line description of the issue encountered]
GENERAL PLAYABILITY ISSUES
Are you encountering general playability issues with your video when attempting to view it in a desktop media player?
Do you have a full contingent of media codecs installed on your workstation?
Each production station should have the K-Lite Codec Pack and Quicktime installed. If you are unsure whether you do, contact your supervisor. Non-production stations may not have a full compliment of media codecs installed and so may continue to experience difficulty playing certain types of videos. Open a HelpDesk Ticket if you need these codecs available on your workstation.
Are you attempting to view the video in Windows Media Player and it won't open, won't play, or won't play all the way through/freezes at any point?
Don't do that. Open the video with VLC or Media Player Classic. If you do not have either of these players installed on your computer, reach out to the Help Desk Portal to request installation.
Is your media player up to date?
Check if there are any updates available for the media player you are using, which may provide enhanced functionality and/or bug fixes that could cause potential playability issues. Notify HelpDesk if an update is available but you are unable to apply it.
Does the video play but you can't hear any audio?
Check that your speakers and/or headphones are turned on and functional. (Yep, you'd be surprised how often this helps. No solution is too small when it comes to troubleshooting!)
Still no audio?
Open the video in MediaInfo (right-click and select MediaInfo from the list if you already have MediaInfo installed) and check that the video has an audio track. If MediaInfo lists no audio track when there should be one, then the video does not have an audio track and a transcode will be unable to magically produce one. Contact the project manager to procure a new video.
If the video does have an audio track and still doesn't have audio, it's possible that the video was exported with an audio track that was muted prior to the export, meaning it displays an audio track but you will still not be able to hear any audio. This does happen occasionally, and in these cases, a transcode will simply reproduce the muted audio. Contact TechOps to QC the video and verify whether the existing audio track contains actual audio data.
Does the video contain multiple audio tracks?
If MediaInfo lists multiple audio tracks, this can cause issues for some players. Contact TechOps to QC the video and transcode if necessary.
GENERAL USABILITY ISSUES
Are you encountering general usability issues with your video, such as stickiness/slowness when opening/importing, playing, or navigating through it in production software (e.g. EZT, Starfish, ProTools)? Read below.
Are you using Mac or Windows?
MOVs may operate better on Macs. If you only have an MP4 available, you can request a transcode from TechOps. ProRes MOVs may have issues on Windows. These should also be transcoded.
What codecs does your video contain in combination with what file extension?
Check your video in MediaInfo. The codecs will be listed in the top Container and general information section, under video stream and audio stream. If MediaInfo reports a video stream of AVC and an audio stream of AAC LC for MOVs or MP4s, or if it reports MPEG Video and MPEG Audio for MPGs, then these are standard video and audio codecs that should be functional in almost all software on either Mac or Windows, suggesting your problem may lie elsewhere.
The vast majority of proxies we receive from clients and proxies we create internally are AVC/AAC MOVs or MP4s (note that AVI and MPG videos will list other codecs in MediaInfo, but we do create AVI and MPG proxies for internal use as well). MXFs can also be generally problematic due to often containing multiple audio tracks in addition to codecs particular to the MXF format that may not be accessible on all workstations. If your video lists other video or audio codecs (especially if it's an MOV or MP4), or you are working with an MXF, request that TechOps QC the video and transcode if necessary.
Is your production software up to date?
Check if there are any updates available for the production software you are using (EZT, Starfish, etc.), which may provide enhanced functionality and/or bug fixes that could cause potential usability issues. Notify Helpdesk if an update is available but you are unable to apply it.
In EZT, are you experiencing issues during or after opening/importing the video?
If you opened the video in EZT and are experiencing issues, try importing it. EZT converts videos to AVIs and this may resolve your issues. If you imported the video in EZT, try opening it. EZT's conversion may have introduced problems where the original video opened may still function just fine.
How large is the video you're working with?
Check the video file size. On Windows, click on the View dropdown list in a file window and select the Details view, or right-click on a video and select Properties. On Macs, right-click the video and select Get Info. All videos Captionmax processes that are over 1 GB in size are automatically transcoded during intake, in order to try to preemptively resolve issues of usability due to file size. Larger files may function slower in software. If your file is over 2 GB (or larger than 3 GB because it was not processed through intake), contact TechOps to QC the file and transcode if necessary. Also request that Helpdesk get you a faster computer.
Is your video an internally created proxy?
Captionmax's internal proxies are designated by a _[XXX] suffix appended to the end of the file, before the file extension (e.g. Some Video_[PROXY].mp4). Any video in our system with an internal proxy suffix means that we created the proxy from an existing original that is also on our network. Internally created proxies may have introduced issues into the video regarding usability or may have been unable to resolve existing issues in the client's originally provided file. Contact TechOps to QC the proxy against the original, especially if experiencing issues like the video and audio being out of sync with each other.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Bracketed proxy suffixes should never be considered part of the file name when saving project files or final files. Always remove the _[XXX] when saving files and save them per production file naming practices. If you're ever unsure about file names with regards to production files, ask your supervisor.
MAJOR MALFUNCTION ISSUES
Are you encountering major malfunction issues with your video, which may include no audio or video, audio or video that abruptly cuts off, or segments of major distortion in audio or video that prevent production use? Read Below.
Have you discovered sections of video and/or audio that are distorted in specific places in the video?
If the majority of your video functions and plays correctly with good video and audio but there are specific timecodes where the audio and/or video becomes significantly distorted to the point of affecting production, this is a sign that there is corruption in the original file. Ask TechOps to QC the video and transcode if necessary, particularly if you are working with a proxy. Also notify the project manager that a new video may need to be requested.
Is your video missing a video or audio track when it should have one?
If your video should have a video or audio track but you believe they are missing, check the file in MediaInfo to verify that the tracks are indeed not present in the actual file. Contact TechOps to QC and contact the project manager to request a new video.
Is your video intentionally missing a video or audio track but this is preventing it from opening and functioning correctly in your production software?
Sometimes we receive audio-only files that need to be converted to videos in order to play in production software, or vice versa, we receive video files that intentionally have no audio tracks but this prevents them from opening correctly in production software. EZT can open audio-only files, such as WAVs or MP3s, and does not usually require a transcode for them to be usable. Try opening or importing the audio file to see if it plays. If you have a video with no audio tracks and the software complains, contact TechOps and request a transcode of the video with a silent audio track added.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
According to the Internet, Albert Einstein once said, "Once you stop learning, you start dying." So to promote eternal life through endless education at Captionmax, the following additional resources are provided to give you further detail regarding media files, transcoding, and troubleshooting in general.
QUICK CODEC PRIMER
You may be wondering, "What's all this about codecs? Why do I need to bother knowing anything about H264/MPEG/ProRes blah blah blah? Isn't a video file just a video file and when I press the play button shouldn't it just play?!"
Well, it turns out that codecs, in the world of computer bits, are the things that make your video file video or your audio file audio and not, say, a text document. And any given media asset (e.g. an MP4 or MOV) is made up of one of a number of video codecs and one of a number of audio codecs, which is why one .mp4 can work flawlessly for you while another .mp4 that seems exactly the same at a glance can cause all kinds of issues in players and software.
The other key thing to understand about codecs is that many software programs designed to play video and audio rely on the codecs installed on your computer. The software itself doesn't always bundle every possible codec into its own program. (Some programs, like VLC, are designed this way, with prepackaged codecs contained in the software, which is what makes VLC generally a more reliable program to preview videos than Windows Media Player.)
And lastly, there is no existing universal standard for which codecs constitute the ideal proxy that we should receive from clients for production purposes. Clients often wouldn't be able to tell you themselves what exact codecs make up the proxy video they just sent us. That video may have been exported according to whatever current preset a video editor at a production house happened to use last in their video editing software, and that's the file we have to work with. AVC video and AAC audio in MP4s or MOVs (the codecs can be included in either wrapper) are pretty common these days and comprise the majority of what we see (although we were limited to using MPEGs in the days of Swift). Apple's got ProRes. Sony's got XDCAM. Everyone's just sort of doing whatever's most convenient for them, and we attempt to accommodate that as much as is reasonable.
These reasons are why it's vitally important to be sure that your computer has the necessary codecs available to process a variety of video and audio types, for which Captionmax relies primarily on the K-Lite Codec Pack plus preinstalled Windows media codecs. These reasons are also why MediaInfo can be one of your best friends in troubleshooting video and audio issues.
Knowing what codecs your particular troublesome video is composed of can help determine whether the video itself could be the cause of an issue you're experiencing versus something in your software, for example. MediaInfo's also good for determining details like frame rate, resolution, HD/SD, and such that are necessary for setting up subtitle jobs properly. And the more often you read MediaInfo reports on the files you're working with, the more you will begin to see patterns emerging that might indicate certain kinds of files are more troublesome on your particular workstation than others, which, again, serves troubleshooting efforts.
Key Takeaway: You will not hurt yourself in this job by studying and becoming more familiar with MediaInfo and the nature of digital video and audio files in general. After all, we each make our living working daily with digital media assets, and while many of us are English majors and not AV engineers, the more we learn about every aspect of our job, technical and grammatical, the better at our jobs shall we be.
TRANSCODING
Don't know what the word transcode means? This may be why...
However, Wikipedia has a bit more to say about it if you do a quick search. (Also, ask Dan Linden about the best method to transcode tacos when you have some free time.)
But TechOps makes those things, right? Or Squeeze or something? Yeeesss, in a manner of speaking.
Let's start with the bit that might blow your mind. Technically, every video that offline production works with is a transcode. Say what?! It's true. Since we're not working with raw streams of live footage, it means that every video we receive from our clients has been transcoded by them into a static, offline format that they are able to pass around via hard drives and download links. So then transcode essentially just means video, right? Well... No.
Within Captionmax, we use the term original, as in 'original video' or 'original asset' to mean the video or media asset that we originally receive from clients for production use. Anytime you hear the word original used in reference to media assets at Captionmax, just mentally add the word 'client' in front of it and you're set. So client originals are the video and/or audio files clients send us from which we produce captions and subtitles and descriptions and such.
In the vast majority of cases, the original assets that we receive from clients for production are themselves already proxies of large-sized, high-resolution master files. The word proxy just means that which is authorized to stand in for something else (to paraphrase MW), and when we call videos proxies, what we're saying is that the videos clients are sending us from which to create their captions or description or whatever are authorized representatives of the final content that will be present in the master video that will eventually be delivered to a broadcast network to appear on airwaves and television sets around the country. (In the case of videos for the web, the client originals we receive may very well be the actual final videos that will eventually be uploaded to a website.)
Fun fact: When TechOps embeds captions into videos, we most often embed captions into large-sized (think 50 GB+ file size) high-resolution master files that we then immediately deliver to broadcast networks. Because these files are so large, they're not usable as working videos in caption or description software. Thus, clients will either send small-sized, low-resolution proxies in addition to the large files, or TechOps will create a proxy internally via the process of... [drumroll] ...transcoding!
And so the circle of transcoding comes full...circle. When TechOps transcodes a video, it just means that we're changing it from its current format into another format (and this could involve changing the file type/wrapper, the video codec, the audio codec, resolution, bitrate, any or every aspect of the original video). Typically, it means we're shrinking the file down to a reasonable file size for production staff to use. Bear this important point in mind: we transcode videos primarily in order to shrink large original files down to a workable size, and Vantage does this automatically for any videos we receive from clients via Captionmax's Media Shuttle. Any client videos over 1 GB in file size that are uploaded to us via Media Shuttle are automatically transcoded in order to make them friendlier to work with for production.
This kind of automated transcoding happens behind the scenes, but it's important to keep in mind, because there is a tendency in production for the word transcode to become mistakenly associated exclusively with the idea of way to fix my broken video. Every time that a video is transcoded, it means the original video and audio data in the original media asset gets processed again, which always has the potential to introduce further errors into the file (data loss, data corruption, etc.). And depending on the degree of the transcode (going from a very large file to a very small file, for instance), the errors can be substantial. So ironically, while we do use transcoding as a means to attempt to fix video issues in those cases where we have evaluated that there is a fair likelihood of success, we are also using a process that can itself introduce further issues into the video. This is why it is generally recommended not to create transcodes of transcodes, as much as is possible (understanding that this is still sometimes necessary). The more times the same video gets processed, the greater the compounding of lost and corrupted data, which is known by the technical term generation loss.
In addition to shrinking files and attempting to fix bad videos, we also use transcoding processes to accomplish a number of things that are necessary to production work, though they are not as prevalent because they are more specialized functions of transcoding. We can transcode a video in order to separate its audio track and video track, so that VDS, for example, is able to use just the audio in software like Audacity, which does not have video-playing capabilities. Conversely, we are able to transcode audio-only files like MP3s and add video tracks to them so that they can play as videos in media players. Subtitle rendering also involves transcoding, because in order to burn subtitles into an original video, we have to create an entirely different video from the original that includes the subtitles.
Did you also know, those of you who use EZT, that EZT itself contains a transcoder within it? When you import a video into EZT, EZT begins a transcoding process to convert whatever file type the video is into an AVI video. This AVI video exists as a completely separate video asset from the original file that you imported. Thus, it is transcoded.
But how do we perform all this transcoding? We've already touched on one method: automated transcoding via Vantage. Among many other things, Vantage includes several different transcoding engines within it that allow it to convert video and audio files in many different ways. And also importing videos into EZT is another method that is available to any editor with access to EZT, the implication here being that transcoding is not some arcane and highly technical process that only TechOps is able to administer. Editors should not fear transcoding!
Folks who worked through the Swift days may have some vague recollection of there being certain folders in certain locations on the network related to a certain program called Squeeze where, if a video file was dropped it into said folders, it would be magically whisked away and returned transcoded anew. The nature of our production workflows has changed to the extent that we do not rely on Squeeze transcoding like we used to. This is overall a good thing, now that Description and Prerecorded can both work with original videos provided by clients. It does mean that we are in the process of revamping the existing transcoding locations and workflows to better serve current needs. The Squeeze workflows are still active, and your supervisors should be able to make use of them for you if need be. But for more detailed info on the preferred automated transcode locations, see the transcodes that are available via TechOps Services.
TROUBLESHOOTING WISDOMS
Fixing an immediate issue does not equal solving a problem
Your current video's broke and you request a transcode; TechOps provides a transcode that works. Your next video for the next episode of the same show is broke and you request a transcode; TechOps provides a transcode that works. Your next video... Picture's clear? TechOps is not tracking what each editor is working on each day and which videos of which projects had issues over the past weeks or months. If we are able to identify a pattern of transcode requests related to a particular show or type of video file, we will attempt to head off future issues either by transcoding all the remaining videos for that show or possibly setting up an automated transcode solution for particular file types of particular clients. However, this is not always possible if requests are only received for a few individual videos in a particular show scattered over the course of a month or more.
You are the one who knows your workstation best and your schedule best. And while requesting immediate transcodes for individual videos causing issues is sufficient to keep your work schedule on track, it is not sufficient as a means to identify and resolve problematic patterns of video issues across shifts and offices. One way you can assist in broader efforts of troubleshooting is to track the issues you continue to experience by noting the particular assets that cause issues, the time, the program, the conditions of your workstation, and saving out MediaInfo reports of those assets (see the MediaInfo page for details on how to do this). The more detail you're able to provide on issues beyond just the immediate working context, the better informed everyone will be on how to anticipate and potentially quash those issues for good.
Planning is problem solving
Do what you can to plan ahead and consider video or media asset evaluation as part of your prep work in setting up jobs, both for a given day's work and for work scheduled in the next few days. With the understanding that any editor's schedule is subject to rapid, even hourly, change, spending time evaluating all the videos in your queue on a given day and videos for jobs in upcoming days is always worth it. The goal that TechOps is working toward on the side of early intake quality control is to catch all asset-related issues at the time that we initially receive assets from clients so that when editors pull assets to their workstations to start the actual production, they do not experience any issues requiring transcode requests or requests to procure new client assets. Bad videos cause delays and frustration for everyone involved, and that's the main thing we're working to avoid. So even if you happen to check a video for a job that's later moved out of your queue, if you manage to catch an issue with that video prior to an editor starting work on it, you have greatly assisted in keeping the broader schedule on track and running smooth.
You are not alone
Sometimes it can certainly feel that way in this cold, cruel world. Sometimes it may even feel that way at Captionmax when you're working late at night in darkened offices or remote locations, headphones on and screen aglow. But the fact is it's not. What does this have to do with troubleshooting? Namely that if you are experiencing a particular technical problem related to a video or your software, chances are others have experienced or will experience it as well. Consider your coworkers as fellow troubleshooters and valuable resources for tracking issues, in order to determine whether other people are experiencing the same thing, or if they aren't, then identifying what's different between their situation and yours, and so on. Knowing whether a technical issue is only happening on your local station or across stations is a big step in helping to identify and resolve issues.
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